046: Can Sales and Marketing REALLY Work Together? with SHERRI SCHWARTZ

hello everyone. And welcome to marketing and sales over cocktails. The weekly podcast that helps you grow your business, improve your life, and enjoy yourself along the way. I'm your host, Allan Langer. And every week we try to bring you the best thought leaders, the best business leaders and the best minds out there to help you succeed in business and in life. So sit back, relax, grab your pad, your pen, and your favorite beverage and enjoy. The next episode of marketing and sales over cocktails. Hello everyone. And welcome back to another exciting episode of marketing and sales over cocktails. And yes, I said exciting because I get excited every time I do one of these podcasts, because I learned so much and I'm hoping you guys learn so much and today will not be no different. I've got Sherry Swartz, a marketing. Sales expert. And I say marketing and sales because she's come from both sides of the tracks. So we're going to introduce Sherry in one second. I'm really looking forward to this conversation, but first typical homework we've got some or housekeeping, I should say, not homework. Uh, the marketing and sales podcast.com is the website marketing and sales podcast.com. That is where you go. And you click on the ask Alan icon on the top. And you send me a question. If I read your question on the air, you get a free signed copy of it. My book sent to you right away. So we've got a great question coming up from Monte in New York city later on. So let's, uh, let's get right to it without any further delay. Sherry Swartz, welcome to marketing and sales over cocktails. How are you? I'm doing well. And thanks so much for having me awesome. So Sherry unfortunately has to have water tonight cause she's driving her kids. These damn kids always get in the way of everything. She's taking them to swimming lessons. So she has water. I do not have water. I do not have kids to take the swimming lessons anymore. They're full grown. So cheers. Anyway, uh, for joining me, there's a virtual cheers. I have tequila, so, Oh, jealous. Okay. So Sherry Schwartz is the senior director of marketing at Zafin Zafin is a, uh, it's a, basically a financial institution that does SAS work and cloud‑based stuff for banks and credit unions and things like that. I probably butchered that, but it's basically. A company that works with financial institutions is probably a good way to put it. Um, but she also has a great background in sales and marketing also from the military. And so Sherry, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your background, because it's really cool where you came from and how you got to where you are now. Yeah. So growing up, I knew I was going to be the next Katie Couric and I always, I love starting with that because that's, my degree was broadcast journalism. That's the most flattering comment I think I've ever received. I knew that's what I wanted to do with my career. And I interned with NBC, uh, a local news station with Washington DC, NBC news, channel whore. And then I did a sports marketing internship, my second internship in college. And that was with octagon when largest sports marketing firms. And it was there that I said, you know, I love broadcast. I love journalism. I love writing, but darn the creative side of marketing is kind of calling my name, unfortunately, no matter which way it crumbled. I graduated right around the financial crisis. So I was competing with everybody, uh, even senior executives for jobs due to all of the layoffs and what happened in, you know, within the job market during that time. So I actually went into sales. Uh, I, I took it as, you know, I'm a business minor. I've done marketing I've I can write, I like talking to people. I'll go into that. Not really thinking that it was going to be longterm. So I joined a company out of Virginia Beach, Virginia called ads, and they do sales for the military. They have a bunch of government contracts that make it extremely easy for the military to be able to purchase any of their needs. So you become that middle man between the military and their needs, as well as, um, Working with vendors to secure best price, fastest delivery and the right equipment for deployment or anything that they need. So I was traveling a lot to San Diego selling to West coast, Naval EOD, and maybe diverse, uh, ended up loving it. It was one of the best opportunities right out of college. Um, and I was also diving right into a male dominated industry. Um, and I, I have to stop you there. So you were selling. To the male. So divers pretty much everyone in the military. We were male divers at the time, I would think, right? Not too many female divers going around. And you came in as a female sales rep, who's in her early twenties and you had to figure out how to be successful. That's impressive. I did well, and I, it was not just diverse. It was EOD as well. So thinking, think, um, ordinance disposal, thinking bombs, underwater bombs, because they're the Navy. So they're, um, putting apart part bombs. On dry land as well as on the, in the sea. And so I was selling everything from boots to body armor, to underwater robots, to mind detectors and Conex boxes, you name it. I kind of had to figure out everything I learned really early on that the only way to be successful at that time, especially in a male dominated industry, was to do the research. I'm a little type a, so I wasn't going to lose. I'm pretty competitive. So I, um, I w I didn't want to go into a shop on a base. And talk to a senior chief or talk to the supply room and they not take me seriously and not think that I didn't understand their needs, studied everything. I studied everything that I could about the best way for them to do procurement through the contracts. I studied everything I could about their needs, whether it was tools or the robots, or, um, all of the compliance regulations around it because I wanted to be taken seriously. And it was the most challenging job for someone. On 21, 22, 23 years old to do as a female selling to do these people who are experts. And, you know, we have the largest military base in the world. Um, excuse me. So, and I was the top producing sales rep for four years at that company before I left and went into marketing as my career. So I did sales for four years, top producing sales rep, and then I ended up deciding, you know what I. I know what it's like now as a sales rep to have great marketing or to not have great marketing and what I needed to do on my own to make it successful. My background was more in marketing and comms, and I got to a point where my husband and I were relocating, I needed to look for another job. And I said, you know what? I think that I can put both my background in sales, as well as my degree, and to use in marketing and comms. And that's what I want to do for my career now. So I switched. Cheers. So I've spent the last nine years doing that. I started in communications for a capital markets, firm, FHN financial out of Memphis, Tennessee. And then I left there after three years, relocating again, not military. My husband is not military. I always have to tell everybody that. Um, and yeah, you mentioned what does he do? He does something kind of unique, right? He works in the lumber manufacturing business. So he works for a Canadian lumber manufacturer, West Fraser. They bought international paper's lumber division. Years ago. And so he travels a lot in that job. He does. Um, and I know everything I can weirdly enough about lumber as well. And we are on the road that if you're doing a drive, um, you slow down by the 18 Wheeler to check out the logs or the stamp on the two by fours or four by fours to see is that West Fraser lumber. We are that family. Um, we are so. By the way these boys are already embarrassed by mom and dad early, early in their years. So, uh, I, I left there and then I got the wonderful opportunity within CNO. It's a FinTech SAS bank technology company to build the product marketing arm from the ground up there, um, in their early startup years. So I got to do that for four years and grow product marketing, where it was just me to then managing over a team of eight product marketers. And went through not only a product, multiple product launches, but also acquisitions within the company as well as global expansion. And it was a wonderful place to be in for the career and really get to be part of all of those different facets. And that was where I worked so hard at making sure, especially when we didn't really have a fully functional product marketing arm in the beginning that sales had every single thing that they needed to be successful. And that was really, really empowering. To me. And that's where I really drew from my background in being a sales rep and knowing what it was like to protect, to have some good stuff and does not have some, not so good stuff and create stuff on the fly. And I wanted to make sure that that was a really good bridge between sales and marketing, where they could not only learn from us. And we learn from them and have a really good open communication, but there was trust there. They knew that we were committed to helping them achieve their goals. Uh, it's really easy sometimes to have marketing and sales be at odds and a constant battle of friction. It is. And I wanted to make sure too, that all of our KPIs that we were tracking as an organization inside of product marketing were completely aligned to what sales needed to achieve as well as product. Um, because we have to be the middleman between product and sales. And then I left there and I got to build product marketing from the ground up again, um, with open doors success. Sports technology company. And now for the last eight months, I have expanded beyond product marketing and I'm building a marketing team from the ground up at another staff. Bintech banking bank technology company, different than open, uh, different than Encino, uh, where in Siena was in lending and deposits. This is in product and pricing platform for banks. So, um, yeah, so that's quite a resume. And so anyone listening that needs someone. A marketing system built from the ground up. You can contact Sherry. She's not leaving her job though, but cause she just started, but maybe in five or 10 years, she won't, but she seems like she likes that starting from the ground up, building that stuff and um, which is awesome. Cause that takes a special person to do that. So congratulations on your success in your career so far. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's fun. I love what I do. A bunch of questions popped in my head. This always happens. I write questions down. I never get to them because the conversation takes. In different directions and I love it. Um, there's two things I want to talk about. We're going to get to the marketing and sales aspect, but you said something and, and I think we, we touched on this when we had our pre‑call, before this recording the bro culture and sales, you experienced it firsthand. You were a 22 year old female visiting Naval bases and trying to sell stuff. And I'm sure you experienced. The negative part of that from a macho sexism standpoint, what do you tell the young female sales rep today that still, uh, cause that's, that's still exists that bro culture, culture still exists. Uh, usually in larger organizations, uh, where the, where the, the sales industry is a male dominated industry, especially in certain sectors like tech and things like that. What do you tell that person or that female that's experiencing that? Uh, how does, how does she handle. Excellent. And what would you, what advice would you give her? I would say that you, you take what you're experiencing, uh, whether it's in my situation, catcalls on the military base or a senior chief saying, what does she know about tools? She is not going to know a Phillips from a Flathead. Um, and you take, you take all of those things, even if it's a male sales reps that's within your organization and just not taking you seriously internalize it. I used it as fuel. Um, and, and I'm too competitive by nature, as I stated earlier. And I'd say utilize that as your competition utilize that as your fuel and, and do your due diligence. I think unfortunately the way that we are, I would love to say that we are in a state in our, in our world that we don't have to as women overwork or over prove ourselves. I don't think that we've quite gotten there yet. I think that we've continued to make rounds. We've made wonderful leaps and bounds, but we're not still there. We're not quite there yet. So. We do have to work a little bit harder and we do have to study a little bit more and we do have to put that extra best step forward to get to the top, but don't let it stop you because you will get noticed and you will be able to move to the top. Uh, I think some of the Mo and I also, and you can also have a career and raise a family. And I think that that's a really hard thing, too, that you noticed coming from the pandemic, the amount of pressure on parents. But especially mothers that you put on yourself as well. How am I going to work all of these hours? And my kids are at home and they're studying downstairs or, um, you know, I'm working remote, but now it's all of a sudden I'm working almost at all hours of the night because everyone thinks, Oh, I work from home. I can just turn it on whenever I know. Right. You're a mom. You can do whatever you want. Yeah. Don't worry about the kids jumping on your lap. You know, you can succeed in a male dominated industry. You will. We have to work a little bit harder and overly proved because we haven't quite hit the glass ceiling yet. We've made so many leaps and bounds and you can have a career and, and raise a family, being a successful woman. I don't think, uh, I've always sat there and I will never forget some great advice that was given to me. I had a former CEO that said, Hey, when you're, whenever you climb that ladder. And whenever you're excelling, never step on the knuckles of the. People underneath you climbing that ladder. And that's always, really like stood out to me because I I've always taken it. And especially as a manager now managing multiple different people, male, female, uh, I want to make sure that, especially as a woman, um, and you're in industries that are slightly uncomfortable because they're more male dominated. Um, even thinking is more male dominated. Uh it's okay. You're going to do it. And. I use that as fuel also from a mentoring standpoint, um, we've come a long way. We have a lot, a lot more to do, but yeah, no, it, it, it's such an important point. And I came from the construction industry, B to C, where I was selling doors and windows and roofing and siding. That's where I cut my teeth and talk about a male dominated industry. And if you saw a female in that, in that, um, industry, first of all, it was like, what. Are you doing here? That was the initial thought of everyone in the room. And the second thought was she doesn't know what she's talking about. How is she going to be successful? And it always blew me away. And it always being a father of two daughters. It pisses me off as well. And it's still out there. It's like you said, it's getting better, but man, I still think we have a long way to go so that that's thank you for sharing that advice, because I think that'll be really helpful to a lot of younger women who are, who are trying to take the same path you do. I always look forward to it. Knowing that that's something that I'm going to experience where you walk into a room and you have a presentation and you can start seeing they they're thinking it subconsciously, but it's almost experiencing through facial expressions as well. Like you, you know, what's in the back of their head because their facial expressions have slightly turn. They're starting to look at it with a little bit more squinty eyes or they're leaning back in their chair slightly with like a distance that they didn't realize that they're putting there. And that's when I go. Do you make sure every all ducks are in a row and then I lay the cards down and it's, it's like a game. Um, not because I'm trying to win a game, but it's, it's kind of like the chess move and, and it's to really show, Hey guys, I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you become successful. I I'm here because I care. And here's what I can do for you. Here's the best thing for you that I believe is going to help give you better efficiency or. Get your boots on the ground baster or whatever it is. It's trying to make sure that I'm, I put myself in as close to their shoes as possible. And the fact that, Hey, I may be female. You may be male, but I understand your needs and I'm here to help you. Yeah. And you know, what's interesting about that. And I'll take I'll, I'll come at this from a training standpoint, there's always going to be people in the room who. I don't want to be there. Who could care less about the person that's in the front of him, especially if you say that dreaded two words, sales training. Oh my God. I got to go to a sales training thing because all salespeople know everything. They think that the best salespeople in the world, but you quickly learn that, that the people in the room who actually want to learn are usually the, the, usually they are the best reps. They're the biggest earners or the biggest closers. They know what they're doing. And I was always, when I was doing my thing. Windows. It was an older guy, uh, who had been selling probably 30 years just went selling windows for 30 years. I mean, just the amount of things that he's seen in his experience were, you know, unbelievable. And every sales meeting, he was still sitting there taking notes. And I never forgot that because he always, after 30 years still wanted to learn. And I think that can be applied to any business that you're in always want to learn. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Still learning, uh, in, as I hire team members, I, you know, and I'm building out people and I've, I've been building out teams for several years now. Uh, I always look to, to hire somebody, that's obviously an expert in their craft inside of marketing, but that is also a continual learner. That way I can get a sense that they're going to stretch and they're going to grow and we're going to do really good things together, continually as marketable strategy evolves, et cetera, but someone I can learn from. I'm a visual learner. And I can't tell you the amount of tabs. It really stresses my team out. The amount of tabs that is on my browser. If I'm sharing my screen and immediately they're like, well, I found this great article and I want to read it, but I don't want to forget about it. So I'm leaving it open because I know. And as, so, a lot of my tabs are, are, are, are those types of articles. And I love building teams that have that eagerness. To continue to learn as well where it's not just like, Hey, I know everything. I'm an expert at what I do, but Hey, I'm really good at what I do, but I want to get even better. And, and I think that's, especially when you're building teams from the ground up in more of the high growth SAS startup modes, like most of the companies that I've worked at, that's a critical and fundamental piece to getting the hiring, right. Is because you need people that are going to be able to be from the ground up, helping you build the framework. But also continue to learn because not every practice and every marketing department is cookie cutter and strategies that work at one place. Aren't always going to be the strategies that work at another, especially if they're different industries or even if they're the same industry, completely different product sets. And so I love getting people that are eager to roll up their sleeves and learn. So let's, let's slide over now to the marketing side of this because you came from sales and that is such an important. Thing that you said is like, you came from the sales side, so you understood what the marketing team needed to do for sales. Like you as a sales person, you were like, I need, I know, I, I, I, I know what I need the marketing team to do, or I know what kind of leads that I need. So you kind of came from that mindset where a lot of times they don't talk, like we mentioned, at the beginning of the podcast, they don't talk at all the sales team bitches about the marketing team, the marketing team bitches about the sales team. Cause they can't close the leads. The C‑level people are bitching about everybody. Cause they're not reaching their numbers. Nobody's getting along and, and I've seen it. I've seen it a hundred times in organizations. It's usually the norm rather than the exception. Yeah. So what is it that you can tell a company that has a marketing and a sales team? Where do they start? How do they start getting along? How do they Rodney King this and say, can't we all get along and, and, and come together as a team. I think the first piece is the educational piece. So I'm a big proponent. I, some people are like, Oh, not another meeting on the calendar, but if you don't set it, it's not a date. And so I like to put routine meetings on calendars with key sales or business development leads. Maybe it's a once every two weeks lead generation meeting where it's the key constituents from both parties. And that's the conversation that week completely separate from the, some of the other sales enablement pieces on training on more new stuff, but let's take Legion. As a prime example, put it on the calendar. It's date. You're going to show up. But in the very beginning of it, the fundamental piece that you can do is not talk at each other and just say, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what you're going to do. Or I think you should do this. I think you should do that. You've got to learn and, and give both parties the floor to talk. What are your priorities? What are your strategies, sales? What are some of your focus for this year? What are your priorities? Where are you going then marketing go, Hey, this is what we're thinking. Demand and lead generation and here's, and then always leave the very end of it. And going, especially in the very beginning, when you're just learning from each other, that open piece, I'm like, how do we want this handshake to go? So that it's lucrative for marketing, it's lucrative for sales and we're in it together so that you can really set that fundamental bridge for lead generation. That's just a hypothetical example where your KPIs are super aligned or across anything quality. And quantity, whatever, what are quantitative and qualitative, as long as you'll start seeing that bridge between those KPIs. And then you've also got to continually keep that on the docket. You may, when you're starting a lead generation program, and you're trying to blur the line with sales and sales as well, these aren't high quality enough, you know, you're just, you're, you've turned on this faucet and I'm spending 400 contacts right now that I've got to reach out to. And none of them are good. Right. We built the framework. So if you're inundated and if you're swamped, I'll turn the faucet off. And now let's up the game. So say they had to score 50 in part on let's get them to score an 80. Let's see if that helps. It's continual refinement and improvement, especially if you're building the baseline and the framework, because you don't have a benchmark from the previous year. And that's kind of what we've run into a lot with startups. You don't have a benchmark. Previous year because you weren't doing it. So you've got to open up the conversation and collaboration, and it's no pointing fingers at anybody and you both have to be really committed to getting it right as an organization together. Are you a proponent of the numbers game? Are you a proponent of saying just simply, okay. Marketing team, you have to come up with a hundred leads a week and okay. Sales team, you have to sell 30 of those leads and that's it. They don't care about. And anything else they want to hit those numbers. What's your reaction to something like that? I think at that point I'm not a number span was like, you must hit this each week or you must hit this many from marketing leads. I don't like that because then I feel like we're selling ourselves short of the gray area. There's so much gray area too, when you're setting out benchmarks and you're building out frameworks that you might cut, somebody's really worthwhile. Um, cause you're trying to stick to this little framework. I think. Breath in the beginning. Um, and you can have a goal and a KPI that says, Hey, we're gonna marketing only had 75 leads last year. Let's just like low ball it, 75 leads last year. We want to triple that number this year. Well, give it that this year framework, but then allow yourself the space in quarter one and quarter two to refine and retune the process to not be so pressurized on lead by numbers. But get the process, right. Get the flow right test and refine and see, get new things and process. Um, and then, and then measure, where are we? Do we need to change the measurement? Do we need to loosen it? Do we need to tighten it, give yourself the room to be able to do that because I think if you get solely focused on numbers, you get extremely tunnel vision and you can't see forest from the trees. I could not agree more. And, and the companies, and I think. This is a trend that is very, very slow to happen, but I thought I starts, I'm starting to see it is where the companies, that mandate touchpoints and they mandate you have to make 400 calls in a week and you have to visit 85 clients per month or whatever it is. They're realizing that that doesn't work. It, it it's, it's so much more than that these days. It used to be when, when people couldn't go on the internet and you were the only source of information, of course, touch points were good because you were the only place. They could find out about a SAS system for a bank, but now 97% of customers are doing research online before they even start a sales process or a purchasing process. So it's, it's, it's really becoming more quality now than quantity, or at least it's starting to shift that way, which thank goodness. Cause that's, that's a, that's a good direction it's going in. Yeah, absolutely. Great. I mean, we're, we're take pandemic for example, uh, the amount of emails that are hitting. Everybody's inbox during this season has like quadrupled. And so if you're solely focused on email marketing for your lead generation, well, good luck breaking through the noise, but if, and then you've got the worldwide web at your fingertips, it's not 1991 anymore, where there's just one search engine. You've got plenty of things at your fingertips. The amount of self guided discovery is through the roof. They are going to do their due diligence and they are. <inaudible>, they may not search for you by name, because if you haven't done a lot of brand awareness, they don't know you exist yet, but they're searching for you by a key word. And if you're not monitoring that, and then utilizing that to increase the amount of thought leadership and brand awareness through PR efforts or through other content, then you're not enabling them in, um, to do their self guided discovery and to beef up the amount of activities they're doing on your website or engaging with you and hearing about you. Because that's the other problem. If you're focusing on mass cold emails, for instance, you're never going to break through the noise and that's not going to be a quality lead for business development. If you give them what they want through lead generation, through content marketing and PR efforts and brand awareness in the search engines and the, in the web where they're already spending their days re researching stuff, they're going to be a more quality lead because by the time they passed over, they have shown you. They haven't just opened an email. They've shown that they have either research or buying intent. Aye, everyone who just listened to that stop and rewind and listen to it again. That's such important advice. And, and what you're saying there, and I wanted to ask you about this as well. And you kind of, you mentioned that you talked about content marketing and social media has to be part of your marketing plan. And, and I think where a lot of small businesses make a mistake is they try to have people find their website first. Proponent of you want people to get to your website from somewhere else first because you're building the affinity, they're liking you. And they're going to actually say, you know what, now I'm going to check out this person's website because I saw them on Tik TOK because I saw them on LinkedIn because I saw them on Facebook. If they start on your website, they're just a visitor. They, they don't know you. Um, so social, social marketing, social media is so important. It is. As it is, you don't want to make them go onto your website and then try to encourage them to follow you on LinkedIn. You find you on LinkedIn, whether it's through their network, who's, reshared your post or whatever that is, and then go to your site, not go back. Uh, and, and I think that's really, really important, the social piece and what I also like to encourage people to do in their social pieces. Be human. Like I'm not asking you if you're creating a social post on your business. Business channel to be so human that you're like creating weird memes, that don't influence anything, but let it be super conversational. Stop getting so formal in your social posts because you dehus and we get pitched. So yeah, so many things all the time, and it feels like this boring sales pitch where your suit and tie and you're all like it's so stuffy. I think people just want to be treated and talked to in a very human conversational way. So I encourage a lot of companies to say, Hey, you might have formalized documentation, or you may have formal language in your sales, um, any of your sales work, but when it comes to your social posts as a business, be fun, be loose. Um, and I, and I think people, I think that people relax a little more about it and be like, Oh, that was funny. Or that was clever. I liked their spin on this. It just, it just makes it more fun. Have fun, absolutely have fun. And I actually. Uh, I started, um, uh, Tik TOK account about six weeks ago. Um, it was, it was a challenge. I have an accountability partner. We challenged each other to start a tectonic account. And I got my 12 year old to teach me how to do it. And, uh, you know what, it's actually making my other posts more fun. Like Tik TOK, you can literally just have fun. And I went into it just having fun. And I'm actually, I've actually gotten, I haven't gotten business from it yet, but I've gotten. So much, um, exposure from it and people contacting me about my sales class and things like that and coaching. So, but I encourage people. If you feel like you're stuffy started Tik TOK account, that'll take the stuffing out here right away. I, I did one and I signed up for one early in the pandemic and I was, and this was right when tiger King was super hot Carole Baskin, voiceovers, and. I absolutely jumped on that train. And my, my oldest son, who's seven keeps saying, mom, should we do tic TAC tonight? And my husband's like fun. It's very fun. And I like to go, when I go into social media, I like to do play on words as well, or play on lyrics and turn them into something really fun for your business. Um, just that we spend so many hours a day pitching something or writing formal documentation. Let's let social media be, um, pleasantly fun to, to humanize that side of the business. So, so, so cool. All right. I think it's time for the ask Alan segment. This is Katie is, um, Katie cheese. You're like my 12th zoom today. So I had a Katie right before you, so Sherry, I apologize. Um, this is a great question. Um, this comes from New York city, uh, and a guy named Monte wrote this in, so I'm gonna. I asked you this question, Sherry, and I'd love to hear your response to this because I think, especially with what we're talking about, um, this is really, you know, right in the right, in the wheelhouse. So Monte writes, I am a sales rep at a large tech company and our marketing team is responsible for driving leads. The problem is they are graded on the number of leads. They get, not the quality. So quality be damned. I want to say something about this, but it's like, we can't even. Contact the marketing people at all, any suggestions, and then he ends with, I know tough question, Monty. Thank you for that amazing question, Sherry. The floor is yours. Oh, Monte. It is such a good question. And I, and I feel for you, that's a hard seat to be in. Um, what I would really encourage you to do is I think that it's, uh, it would be really good for you to get with your other sales rep constituents and see if that's across the board. So that. The way you can create kind of the plan or the view, the look back or retrospective as you like, might want to call it of what you're seeing across the board consistently and believes that way. It's not a one person vendetta. Um, but instead it's a collective group that's saying, Hey, this is what we're noticing. Um, and, and provide examples as well. And then also provide like key things that you might want them to consider. But then I would also get. Uh, meeting with the marketing team, get it with demand gen maybe a content marketer, as well as maybe the marketing director. And just ask if we can create a consistent meetings on a once a month cadence, but then to be able to evaluate what you're seeing in the place, because I think it's extremely important that the sales reps voice is heard. And so that marketing can understand that marketing department is not going to be successful. If sales isn't using the material. If sales isn't. Um, getting valuable leads. It's just a marketing department. And so they're not, they're not giving anything to the sales reps or the sales reps can't use it. So I really encourage you to go ahead and see what the commonality is amongst all of the sales reps and their leads, and bring that to marketing for a discussion because an encouraged marketing and let it come from you guys to say, Hey, we'd like to set up a once a month meeting to talk about lead generation. Would you be good with that? Because we want to make sure that we're getting. Quality leads. And I would add to that. That's a great answer. Uh, Sherry, I would add to that, that approach it not from a complaining standpoint, but we want to help the company standpoint. We want the company to succeed. We all want to succeed, but as sales reps, this is what we're seeing in the field. I used to use the term when I was in the field. I actually befriended a few people in the marketing department. And when I ran a shitty lead and trust me, there were a lot of shitty leads. I would text them and say, check. The phone call on this one. Yeah, because they had new call center reps, setting these appointments, check the phone call on this one. This customer said X, Y, and Z. Um, we don't even make that product. So check it out. And it was always from a, you know, just wanting to let you know that this happened. I'm not mad. It was just a lead as a lead. I ran the lead. Um, but you may want to check to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Yeah. And to add to that, Alan, what I like, what I love to see from sales is to say, Hey, With all of these leads the message that resonated most in the discovery process. When we took those was X, Y, Z, and then whatever that common message was, whether it was, Hey, I was pitching the solution and it was this use case that really made them go from lead to MQL or lead to SQL whatever your scoring mechanism was. Then marketing could take that information and create more meaningful content and more meaningful campaigns. Right around the messaging that worked the most for the most valuable leads. And then you're going to start seeing some more increases. So they're getting something more valuable from you as well. They're not deciding what campaigns or what content or what topic to do on their own. At that point, they're hearing from sales as to what's working best for them. And that should make a marketer's life easier. You shouldn't be like, Oh, well, thank you. That, that makes it easier for me. I don't have to sell research and educate. I hate and think that I've got all the right answers, we're coming at it together to improve that brand awareness. So for those who don't have marketing hats on Sherri just used inside language, MQL is marketing qualified, lead, and SQL is sales qualified lead just for those people who do thank you. No, it's we all do it. It's like I'm coaching someone. It's the biggest thing that to help to have them. Stop doing his talk about things that they say that to them it's everyday language, but to a customer, they have no idea what the hell you're talking about. So most people I'm sure knew what that was, but I just wanted to point that out too. That's what you want. QL valuable. Yeah. The Kimanti I think is, is, is that, you know what you wanted to, you want the leads to be good forever. For the, for the benefit of the company. And I think, um, you know, what, if you do it the right way, you might come out of this as like, wow, Monte's really, really a, a great rep. And, and you might, you know, be, be looked at a different way, uh, from a leadership standpoint. So you never know where it could lead, but don't, don't sit there and keep your mouth shut. That's the worst thing you can do. I call them my champions. I love the sales reps that will provide the back or give me, uh, information from the field on, Hey, these leads. Work that I was working. Um, this message really resonated for them. These other leads teams that they were a little, they did not have enough information and, and I call them my champions because they're the ones that I know have marketing's back as well to create a really successful bridge between sales and marketing. Um, they give us grace knowing that we're going to refine and retune and change, and we may not hit at, out of the ballpark and a home run on the first win, but I love that they. Comfortable enough to come to sales, um, come to marketing and want to work together. Great way to end the podcast. Terrific stuff. Sherry Schwartz. I'm really happy you were here. If you had to leave everyone in the audience with one piece of advice, one Sherry Swartz, piece of advice, what would it be? I would, I would keep the collaboration and the communication open. We cannot have a successful sales and marketing organization without committee. Education. And as much as it's might be battling an at odds, in some instances, keep the communication going. Don't stop. Awesome. Sherry ha if people want to chat with you or hook up, hook up with you on LinkedIn or some is somewhere, how do they find it? They just go on LinkedIn for Sherry Swartz, or is there a specific way to find Sherry Schwartz? You will find me. I don't think there's a lots of those Sherry Schwartz's out there by the way. S H E R and Schwartz with the S C H. W a R T Z. So find me on there. You might also find me on Tik TOK. I apologize me crazy. You might be. And I I'm on Instagram, but Instagram is my mom account, so I will be sharing lots of photos of my kids. That's the mom account. Well, Sherry sports. Thank you for joining me tonight. This has been a lot of fun, really eyeopening stuff. Uh, really great, uh, takeaways on this one. So I want to thank you for joining me and I want to thank everyone else out there for joining us. On episode 46 of marketing and sales over podcast. Remember send me that question. Monte is getting a free signed copy of my book because he sent a question he sent in an awesome question and we read it on the air. So get that done, go to the website, leave a review, tell everyone about marketing and sales over cocktails. It's a fun podcast. I want to thank you for joining Sherry. Thanks once again for joining us and we will see everyone again. Next time.